Universal Pictures

As of late the cinematic genre of choice happens to be the ostentatious antics of raunchy female groupings — something to feast on for the estrogen crowd. For the most part these “loose ladies of the pack” films have been profitable, whether bordering on the reputation of a box office cult hit like “Bridesmaids” or…

It’s a well-known fact that most third installments of film franchises do not rise to the level of the first (and often the second). Now, these examples are subjective, of course, but I present as evidence the following pictures: “Rocky III,” “Superman III,” “The Dark Knight Rises” and “Star Wars: Episode VI: Return of the…

For a film franchise that began in 1931 (with Boris Karloff in the original title role) and includes literally dozens of pictures, there are still some new things I learned from this latest edition (directed by Alex Kurtzman, “People Like Us”) of The Mummy. For instance, mummies and other otherworldly entities — even though buried…

Planes, running and Tom Cruise — three ingredients for a possible a box-office hit converge one more time in American Made, an action-comedy-thriller based on the life of Barry Seal, former pilot for TWA and drug smuggler for Pablo Escobar. It does not take long into this first trailer for chaos to brew with Seal,…

For some, watching an M. Night Shyamalan film is an experience that fills them with dread. But this dread can be separated in two distinct camps: First, the good kind of dread that accompanied Shyamalan’s first blockbusters in Hollywood — “The Sixth Sense,” “Unbreakable,” “Signs” — all quietly unsettling thrillers that, despite some weaknesses, still…

While a great deal of uninformed critics seem to be falling all over themselves about The Fate of the Furious (the Rotten Tomatoes website actually states, “The Fate of the Furious opens a new chapter in the franchise, fueled by the same infectious cast chemistry and over-the-top action fans have come to expect.”), the eighth…

One night, on a quiet neighborhood street, a black man walks along, minding his business, trying to remember directions he was given. He mumbles to himself about street names and how “confusing and scary-ass” the suburbs are (true story). A white Porsche creeps up behind him, eventually pulling ahead of him to idle near the…